Psst, wanna find out about horticultural projects around the world?
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FAO water boffins forget breeding
FAO has a very slick slide show on the relationship between water, agriculture, food security and poverty. I guess it’s because of World Water Day. But why no mention of crop improvement through breeding? More efficient irrigation is not going to solve this problem on its own, surely.
The microbe commons in the spotlight
The International Journal of the Commons, a new one on me, has a special issue on microbes. Actually, not just microbes. The idea seems to be to compare and contrast what is happening in microbial genetic resources with the access and benefit sharing and IPR regimes which are in force for other bits of biodiversity. There’s even an interesting paper entitled “Crop improvement in the CGIAR as a global success story of open access and international collaboration,” by Byerlee and Dubin. Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics, is a member of the editorial board of the journal.
Twittering rice
The Africa Rice Centre is tweeting (twittering?) away at the African Rice Congress in Bamako, Mali. Oh, there’s a website too, and a blog with an RSS feed, but that seems so terribly 20th century somehow.
Agrobioblitz next?
The British public are being called on to help document their fauna and flora. Nice, and there should be some interesting data on crop wild relatives in there. But I hope this is followed up with a similar blitz on heirloom crop varieties.